Bird flu virus deepens its roots in Indonesia, claims 2 more lives

As expected, the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has deepened its roots in Indonesia, the hardest hit by the virus, by taking two more lives in the country.

Two Indonesian women have died of bird flu, lifting the human death toll this week from the disease in the country to four and overall toll to 61 amid a spike of new cases, the national health ministry reported Saturday.

Before the recent two casualties, a 37-year-old woman from Banten Province on Java Island and a 14-year-old Indonesian boy on the outskirts of Jakarta had died last week from bird flu.

One of the latest victims was a 27-year-old woman from south Jakarta, who was admitted to the Persahabatan Hospital in the capital on Thursday for treatment, died on Friday evening, Muhammad Nadirin of the health ministry's bird flu information centre reported.

Another was a 22-year-old woman from the industrial town of Tangerang near Jakarta, who was kept in an intensive care unit in the same hospital, and died in the early hours of Saturday morning, the official said.

Indonesia, where at least 61 people have now died from bird flu, have been criticized by the anti bird flu agencies for showing less efforts to check the H5N1 when it first appeared in poultry stocks and among backyard chickens in 2004.

"We keep warning people to be careful in handling chickens," Nyoman Kandun, the Ministry of Health's director general of communicable disease control said. "The source of the virus is from chickens. As long as there are chickens around with bird flu, then it is dangerous for people living nearby."

Alone in Indonesia, human death toll due to the bird flu virus, which according to the Geneva-based WHO is generally not harmful to humans, is more than a third of the world's total of 157. The health organization fears millions more could die if the virus mutates and begins spreading easily between people.

Last month, other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Nigeria have confirmed or reported suspected poultry outbreaks, while China and Egypt found new human cases, providing more chances for H5N1 to transform into a pandemic form.

“This time last year, it began to pop similarly and then it began to spread,'' Peter Cordingley, a Manila-based spokesman for WHO, said in an interview on Thursday.

“We saw it go across central Asia into the Middle East, into Europe and into Africa. We don't know whether it's going to happen that way this year, but this virus is very versatile and I think it would be foolish to bet against it.”